Haaretz poll: economy pivotal for 38% of voters

Some 38 percent of respondents in a Haaretz-Dialogue poll taken on Tuesday night said socio-economic concerns would most influence them if the elections were to take place now.

Twenty-seven percent cited security-political issues, and 21 percent gave preference to corruption in the public sector.

The Haaretz-Dialogue figures match those of the Latet organization published on Tuesday morning.

Poverty finished ahead of government corruption, the problems of the education system and security in the rankings, Latet announced on Tuesday.

The poll, part of Latet's yearly report, found that 29 percent of respondents named poverty as the number one problem, while 21 percent cited education and only 15 percent answered security.

This is the first time that security has dropped below second place since Latet began conducting the survey.

In an additional Latet poll, conducted among the needy by the non-profit organization, the group recorded a 50 percent jump in the number of needy citizens in Israel, and of the total, 17 percent come from the middle class.

Some 90 percent of the non-profit organizations that supply Latet with food to distribute reported a marked increase in requests for donations of food in 2005. The average increase in requests was 25 percent.

The average income of a household supported by a non-profit food distribution organization is NIS 2,565 per month. The respondents of the second survey cited health problems as the principal reason they slid into poverty.

A third of the people who receive aid reported that they are suffering not just from poverty, but from hunger. Authorities cut off water, electricity, and/or gas to 45 percent of the respondents, while 42 percent had their bank accounts cut off or severely limited due to overdrafting.

Most of the underprivileged are between 30 and 49 years old, female, and mothers to an average of 3.7 children, the survey found. Most have Mizrahi backgrounds, with a high school education or less. The majority also need regular medical care but are forced to forgo it because they don't have the money to buy medicine.

"We hope the public and the politicians will understand that poverty is a terrible existence and the fight for survival is a fight against hunger, sickness, and a struggle to provide basic products," Jill Darmon, chief of Latet, said in a press conference.

Darmon renewed the organization's call for the establishment of a national organization under the leadership of the prime minister to join in the struggle against poverty, who will have to reduce the poverty level by 30 percent in the next four years, Darmon said.

Labor Party Chairman Amir Peretz said, following the release of the survey that Ariel Sharon was the prime minister of poverty.

"With Sharon the poverty will carry on. The public will not forgive him for regarding with such cynicism Netanyahu's policies."